Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

www.elsevier.com/locate/tra

Congestion charging: Technical options for the delivery

of future UK policy
P.T. Blythe *

Transport Operations Research Group, School of Civil Engineering and Geoscience, Cassie Building,
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK

Received 3 December 2003; received in revised form 22 February 2005; accepted 22 February 2005

Abstract

From a legacy of almost no experience of charging for road use in the UK, except for a small number of
tolled estuarial and river crossings and some innovative flirtations with congestion charging trials, such as
the Cambridge congestion charging scheme in the mid-1990s, in the new millennia the UK is now at the
forefront of research and the deployment of road user charging. With the successful urban congestion
charging schemes now in place in the Cities of London and Durham and the planned introduction of
HGV-distance based charging in 2008 the UK have embraced the charging for road use, however in addi-
tion the Government is also now actively looking at the feasibility of introducing a National road user
charging system to fully or partially replace fixed car-tax and fuel-duty. This raises challenges both of a
political and technical nature which are discussed in the paper.

2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction and background

The milestone government report ‘‘Traffic in Towns’’, better known as the Buchanan Report
(HMSO, 1963), predicted that in the UK the 12 cars owned per 100 people in 1962 would rise
to 38 cars per 100 people in 1995. They were right and this heroic prediction underscores all

*
Tel.: +44 191 222 7935; fax: +44 191 222 8352.
E-mail address: p.t.blythe@ncl.ac.uk

0965-8564/$ - see front matter
2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tra.2005.02.012
572 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

the problems to which the relentless growth of car ownership has given rise over those three dec-
ades. Where the authors of the Buchanan Report were wrong in their prediction, however, was in
assuming little further growth beyond that. They predicted that a ‘‘saturation’’ level in ownership
would be at only 40–45 cars per 100 people by about 2010. The truth is that saturation ownership
levels already being reached in several countries (USA, Italy and Luxemburg, for example) are at
60–65 cars per 100 people. This and other evidence points to the UK being still only two-thirds of
the way to saturation level in car-ownership. If real disposable incomes go on rising, the overall
size of the car population in the UK is likely to rise, from 23M this year to an eventual plateau of
33M to 36M some time before 2040 (DfT, 2003).
If we choose not to plan for it or fail in our best endeavours to combat it, a prospective 50%
increase in traffic over the next 30 or so years will lead to a considerable worsening of congestion.
The CBI has estimated the overall cost of traffic congestion, to UK plc, as being in excess of
£21,000M per year (Blythe, 2003). This is more than all the other ‘‘external’’ costs of road traffic
that fall on society (accidents, noise, pollution, CO2 output, etc.) put together. The potential eco-
nomic returns and social benefits of reducing congestion, therefore, are huge.
In the 1998 Transport White Paper (DETR, 1998) a shift in emphasis in transport policy was
made, moving away from the short-term Ôpredict and provideÕ policy of building roads to meet
demand to the emphasis on ÔIntegrated TransportÕ and utilising policy and (Intelligent Transport
Systems) ITS-tools to persuade the UKs drivers to Ôuse their cars a little less and use alternative
transport a little moreÕ. Key to this was the promise of enabling legislation to empower local
authorities to introduce congestion charging, as a means to manage traffic congestion and to allow
local authorities to retain the income for re-investment in the local transport infrastructure and
improvements in public transport. This has resulted in a number of cities adopting or proposing
to adopt road use charging using a variety of technological solutions.
In parallel with this the Department for Transport (DfT) launched the Demonstration of Inter-
operable Road-user End-to-end Charging and Telematics Systems (DIRECTS) research pro-
gramme which aims at trialing interoperable solutions for road-use charging in Leeds with a
view to delivering a National Specification for congestion charging (Mackinnon, 2003; Tindall,
2004). The trial phase, with around 800 volunteer drivers will be launched in the spring of
2005 (Mackinnon, 2003).
The two activities above make a sensibly synergetic package—however for road-use charging in
the UK, this is not the full story. The successful fuel tax protests of 2000 posed a problem for the
government in dealing with the increasing inflows of foreign HGV hauliers, filling up at Irish and
continental Channel ports with their (now cheaper) diesel and using the British road network ‘‘for
free.’’ This in turn led the Treasury in November 2001 (HM Treasury, 2001) to publish a consul-
tation paper on distance-based charging for all HGVs, British and foreign alike, to ensure fair
competition in haulage and shift to an efficient direct charging regime ‘‘at the point of use.’’
The precedent for this already exists: Switzerland and Austria have already introduced nationwide
charging schemes for HGVs since 2000 and 2004, respectively (Balmer, 2003; Egeler and Bib-
aritsch, 2003) and Germany plans to in 2005 (Charpentier and Fremont, 2003; Ruidisch, 2003;
Kossak, 2004). The Chancellor (i.e. UK Finance Minister) confirmed plans for distance-based
HGV charging in his April 2002 budget which broadly has the backing of the Freight Transport
Association (FTA) and of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The launch of the pro-
curement phase was made in May 2004 with the current timetables suggesting that the HGV
 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587 573

charging will be introduced in the UK in 2008 (already a slippage of 2 years from the originally
mooted launch date of 2006). In the background, however, there is the feeling that the real agenda
is to examine the feasibility of how quickly such a scheme can be ‘‘rolled out’’ to include cars and
other vehicles using our congested motorways, i.e. a National Road Use Charging Scheme. The
Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT) see this as the logical corollary to developing con-
gestion charging in the urban ‘‘hot spots’’ (CfIT, 2002) and this future approach was largely con-
firmed in a major policy speech by the Secretary of State for Transport on 10th July 2003, who
announced a major research programme to examine all aspects of such an approach (Times,
2003).1
The paper will consider how these competing initiatives for road-use charging in the UK are
evolving, how technical and interoperable convergence may be possible in the future and what
impact charging may have on future transport policy in the UK. This is not a new issue, the tech-
nology for electronic road pricing has been debated ever since the trials of ERP were hosted in
Hong Kong as far back as 1985. Some of the most visionary and ground-breaking research
was led by the late Professor Peter HillsÕ team in Transport Operations Research Group (TORG)
at Newcastle University (Hills and Blythe, 1989, 1990; Hills and Thorpe, 1991).

2. The case for traffic restraint

One of the direct consequences of rising car-ownership and use is the steady year-on-year de-
cline in patronage for most forms of public transport. Across the country, outside of Greater Lon-
don, the overall person-km of bus-use have been declining relentlessly since the early 1960s, at
between 2.0% and 4.0% per year, as passengers opt out of bus-use in favour of the strongly
perceived advantages of going by car (Fig. 1a).
The Conservative government of the early 1980s mistakenly regarded the inability of public
transport operators to retain their market-share as being due to lack of competition and to exces-
sive regulation. The Transport Act 1985, therefore, set about the deregulation and privatisation of
all bus operations outside Greater London. Although much was achieved by this radical shake-up
(the breaking of union power, sharp reductions in real costs of bus operation, the widespread
introduction of mini buses, downward pressure on wage-levels, some reduction in overall subsi-
dies for public transport and so on), the one key indicator it failed to influence was the on-going
year-on-year loss of patronage. In the English Metropolitan Counties, the privatised bus opera-
tors have lost more than 40% of their person-km over the 17 years since deregulation. The irony
is that Greater London, the only place in Great Britain exempt from the 1985 Act, has managed
to hold on to its patronage and, in recent years even to increase it. London, of course, is unique in
its size, its chronic traffic congestion and its comprehensive railway network, encouraging very
high levels of public transport use, especially for journeys to work in the centre.
All of this suggests that the scope for public transport to compete successfully against cars, so
as to curb the future growth of traffic, is severely limited (particularly in the deregulated environ-
ment we now have). It would require authorities with powers similar to those of Transport for

1
Editor’s note: The paper by Glaister and Graham in this issue reports on the first analysis of national road user
charging in the UK.
574 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

Fig. 1. (a) Passenger travel by mode 1952–1995 Great Britain (in ‘‘Developing an integrated transport policy: factual
background’’ August 1997, Government Statistical Service). (b) Passenger travel by mode 1997 comparing Great
Britain with other EU countries (in ‘‘European Best Practice in Transport’’ August 2000, Commission for Intergarted
Transport).

London (TfL) to be set up in all metropolitan areas or regions in Britain, to enforce Quality Con-
tracts with private operators, to plan new public transport investment and to administer increas-
ing volumes of public subsidy in order to stabilise the market share.
In any other sector, faced with a rapidly rising demand, the most obvious response usually is to
expand supply to keep pace. This would be possible in the case of road traffic, except in the larger
urban areas, but is no longer regarded as an acceptable solution in isolation. On interurban trunk
roads and motorways, capacity can and will be provided mainly by widening the congested sec-
tions of the network rather than by building new routes in green fields. However, in suburban
areas, where car-ownership and use is rising fastest, the opposition to new road-building is con-
siderable. Often, the argument revolves around the question of ‘‘induced’’ traffic i.e. that building
new roads, by adding capacity to the network, induces more traffic than before. Although the
Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment confirmed in their report (SACTRA,
1994) that this was a real phenomenon and should be accounted for in highway planning and eval-
uation, it is usually only at the level of a side effect. Indeed, except when the amount of induced
traffic is sufficiently large to cause congestion on the new road, it will generally contribute to the
economic benefit of the scheme. The National Road Traffic Forecast (NRTF, 1997) confirmed
this, by demonstrating that, in the long-term, even if no more road capacity were built, future traf-
fic would be ‘‘suppressed’’ by only 10–12% due to increasing congestion. The economic cost of this
mounting congestion, of course, would be huge.
The third approach often canvassed is one that invokes planning policies aimed deliberately at
reducing the need for travel and the perceived dependence on cars to provide it. Advocates of this
approach argue that residential densities should be increased sharply, new developments concen-
trated on ‘‘brown field’’ rather than ‘‘green field’’ sites and in corridors amply served by public
transport. Much tighter parking standards and persistent campaigns to change peopleÕs lifestyles
in favour of bicycling, walking and (if necessary) car-sharing are all part of this approach. Unfor-
tunately, apart from a few well-publicised successes, so much of this goes against the direction of
 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587 575

current market forces in planning and development that it is hard to see how this will be effective
in curbing overall traffic growth, even in the long-term.
The remarkable features of the 1998 Transport White Paper (DETR, 1998), and of the Trans-
port Act 2000 to which it gave rise, are threefold: first, that it recognised for the first time, at
government level, that traffic restraint policies are inevitable (‘‘demand management’’ is the
euphemism employed). Secondly, that no single approach to the problem of future traffic growth
will be effective on its own, hence the emphasis on ‘‘integration’’ and multi-modal studies. Lastly,
and most crucially, it introduced the possibility of including congestion pricing as the one part of
the ‘‘integrated package’’ of policies that has the necessary potency to curb traffic growth.

3. Paving the way to implementation

The easiest way, administratively, to raise the overall ‘‘price’’ of car-use is for government to
increase fuel duty on the price of fuel at the pumps. This in relative terms, this is being done
by reducing the annual fixed-charge vehicle excise duty (VED); for example, fuel tax for a 38-
tonne (4 · 2 axle) lorry has increased from 83% of annual taxes in 1998 to 93% in 2003, making
the taxes more closely reflect the distance travelled. The Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution (RCEP) in 1993—having largely dismissed the arguments for congestion charging—pro-
posed the doubling of retail fuel prices in real terms within 10 years. On the strength of this advice,
the (then) Conservative government introduced the fuel-price ‘‘escalator’’, at +5% p.a. in real
terms, ‘‘for the foreseeable future.’’ In the run-up to the 1997 election, New Labour were not
to be out-done and promised to raise this to +6% p.a. By Autumn 2000, when the whole policy
unravelled in the face of blockades and civil protests, the retail price per litre of petrol in the UK
was the highest in the EU.
Even without the spontaneous revolt, the arguments against continuing the escalator were com-
pelling. As fuel tax is paid proportionately to the use made of the road-system, it makes no dis-
tinction between that use being on a rural road at night and on a city centre street at the peak of
the morning journey-to-work rush. In short, fuel taxes are a poor proxy for the marginal costs of
congestion. Nevertheless, the political set-back of the successful fuel tax protest posed a problem
for the government in dealing with the increasing inflows of foreign HGV hauliers, filling up at
Irish and continental Channel ports with their (now cheaper) diesel and using the British road net-
work ‘‘for free.’’
To bring about the ‘‘pay as you go’’ policies outlined above, technically, we need to introduce
an efficient charging mechanism that can levy road-use charges automatically from drivers with-
out the need for them to stop and pay. Thus, charging systems should enable the collection of
these charges at normal highway speeds and without the need for segregating vehicles into sepa-
rate lanes, as with conventional toll-collection facilities. Indeed, it would be infeasible and
unworkable, in many locations, to require traffic to be segregated into lanes, drivers to stop their
vehicles and pay cash to an operator or by inserting coins, bank-notes or a card into a collecting
machine. Building these toll plazas (such as those at the Dartford, Tyne and Mersey river cross-
ings and throughout Southern and Central Europe, where purpose-built toll roads are wide-
spread) is costly and crucially requires substantial land-area for each site. It is generally not
practical to Ôretro-fitÕ a toll plaza to an existing road—in urban areas, this may be unacceptable
576 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

on other grounds, such as the creation of additional congestion, noise and air pollution. More-
over, purpose-built toll roads have a limited number of entry and exit points, whilst access to
un-tolled roads usually is not so restricted—creating an additional difficulty when introducing
urban road charging.
The publication of the GovernmentÕs White Paper on Integrated Transport in July 1998
(DETR, 1998) caused a shift in emphasis in the UK away from road building, based upon the
Ôpredict and provideÕ principle, towards demand management (i.e. traffic restraint) and a better
integration of modes. Moreover, to encourage Local Authorities to consider congestion charging
as an option to manage the demand for car travel, the Transport Act 2000 requires Local Author-
ities to retain the net revenue raised from congestion charging and/or private non-residential
(PNR) charging for a minimum of 10 years—this Ôring fencedÕ revenue must be reinvested in local
transport schemes. This provision may well be the linch-pin in cities being able to secure sufficient
public acceptance for future congestion charging schemes, offering a mechanism whereby the
ÔstickÕ of Congestion Charging can be offset by the ÔcarrotsÕ of a new revenue stream to finance
improvements in local transport and infrastructure.
The concept of direct road-use charging is not new. Indeed, road-use charging has been consid-
ered as a tool for managing congestion and raising revenue for many decades, although few trials
and implementations have actually taken place. The economic theory on which the principle of
road-use pricing is based was put forward by Pigou (the father of welfare economics) in 1920, with
Vickrey (1969) and Walters (1961) relating it specifically to road traffic. The first ÔofficialÕ acknowl-
edgement of the technical possibilities of direct pricing at the point of use was the Smeed Report
(1964). Since then, a great deal of research has been undertaken and a number of attempts to intro-
duce urban road-use charging have been made, most notably the Hong Kong trials (1983–1985
and 1998), the Singapore Area Licensing Scheme (1975–1998)—now replaced by an automatic
electronic scheme (see http://www.lta.gov.sg)—and the toll-rings around Bergen, Trondheim
and Oslo in Norway (Blythe et al., 2001). Motorway schemes, using electronic devices to auto-
mate single-lane existing toll-collection facilities are quite widespread and include numerous
examples in the USA, Asia and Southern and Central Europe (Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Por-
tugal, Slovenia, etc.), as well as new multi-lane tolling schemes on TorontoÕs Highway 407
(www.407etr.com) and the Melbourne CityLink (see http://www.transurban.com.au/).

4. Technological options for congestion charging

Currently, several electronic technologies are used or have been considered for charging. The
more important of these are briefly reviewed below.

• Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) systems, for two-way communication between a

roadside or gantry beacon and in-vehicle tags or transponders.
• Wide-area communications-based systems, which use some form of location system coupled
with communication systems to manage and enforce the charging.
• Video-based license-plate recognition systems, using roadside cameras with automatic optical
character recognition (OCR) software to match vehiclesÕ number plates with a pre-registered
list.
 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587 577

4.1. Microwave-based dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) systems

These systems need road-side equipment, typically mounted on a gantry, with electronic tags in
the vehicles which may be read-only, read–write or smartcard-based. Read-only tags contain a
fixed identification code which, when interrogated by a roadside reading device at the charging
point, conveys this identity to the roadside system. The code relates to the identity of the vehicle
or the identity of the userÕs account. Read-only tags operate reliably only if used for single-lane
operation at low speed and over a short range. However, their inflexibility, ÔdumbnessÕ and inabil-
ity to work in a high-speed, multi-lane road situation essentially limits their application to that of
automating existing toll-plazas. Read–write tags are a logical development of the read-only tag.
They can receive data from the roadside and store this data directly on the tag. The most flexible
in-vehicle units (IVUs) are transponders (smart tags) that often support smartcards interfaced to
them. They are ÔintelligentÕ, having the capability to handle and process many kinds of data and
(potentially) to be programmed to manage a number of different applications. Such a system re-
quires a reliable, high-speed two-way data-communications link with the roadside and more com-
plex on-board equipment, replacing some of the processing requirements traditionally handled by
the roadside equipment (Fig. 2).
A modular approach is adopted to the transponderÕs design, facilitating Ôadd-onÕ peripheral
equipment (e.g. smartcard readers, keyboards, displays, connections to other in-vehicle equip-
ment). Such transponders were first developed in the EU funded project ADEPT (automatic deb-
iting and electronic payment for transport) project in the early 1990s (Blythe and Hills, 1994;
Blythe, 1998), a European funded project led by TORG in the early 1990s which installed trial
systems in the UK, Sweden, Portugal and Greece (Fig. 3). The modularity in the design of the
automatic debiting transponder allows several different forms of payment (all of them ÔcashlessÕ)
with one device. Possession of a transponder offers uses the possibility of holding a positive (or a
limited negative) balance of credit-units, either directly in the transponderÕs memory or alterna-
tively on a separate smartcard interfaced to the transponder. The smartcard, being portable,
can then be used for other payment purposes. These systems are perceived by many international

Fig. 2. Schematic for a DSRC transponder-based charging system.

578 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

Fig. 3. ADEPT single multi-lane gantry near Thessaloniki, Greece, 1995: worldÕs first commercial multi-lane toll-
collection at speed.

road administrations as the future of road-use charging, where high-volume, multi-lane roads
need to be tolled without restricting traffic flow. European standardisation of DSRC systems
nears completion and many products based upon 5.8 GHz microwave communications technol-
ogy are emerging in the market-place, though to date few commercial installations exist. World-
wide, the Singapore system, the Melbourne City link and Highway 407 in Canada utilise such an
approach. The key limiting factor seems to be the processing speed of the smartcard—in Singa-
pore, each charging point has two gantries—one to start communications with the vehicle and
a second (further down the road) to complete the transaction and perform enforcement measures,
if necessary. The DIRECTS project, using 800 or so volunteer drivers who will have their vehicles
equipped for the trial in Leeds, will finally prove an end-to-end solution for DSRC-based charg-
ing. The aim of DfT is to develop a UK national specification for interoperable payment of road-
use charges, consistent with the emerging European standards.
As with each of the three classes of charging systems considered here, the DSRC systems usu-
ally use video and ANPR as an enforcement system to detect unequipped or fraudulent users—as
at the moment the licence plate is the only unique identifier available to identify the vehicle if the
charging equipment is not working properly, or indeed not installed (Egeler and Bibaritsch, 2003).

4.2. Wide-area communications-based systems

Wide-area systems are a more recent innovation in charging and tolling technology—also
widely known by the term MPS (mobile positioning systems). They use two technologies adapted
from other applications; namely, GPS (global positioning system), whose satellites enable suitably
equipped vehicles to calculate their location accurately and a two-way communications link based
upon either GSM or DSRC. These systems were tested in the German trials in 1995–1996 in par-
allel with an EPSRC-funded trial in Newcastle during the same period and Hong Kong 1998–1999
(Blythe, 1999). They are designed (like DSRC systems) not to disrupt the flow of multi-lane traffic
on motorways. Moreover, because in urban areas ÔvirtualÕ toll-points can be established (and
changed, as necessary), these wide-area systems will reduce the amount of environmental intru-
sion of roadside infrastructure required, in comparison to DSRC systems.
The in-vehicle unit (IVU) contains a GPS receiver and some computing and memory, which
must contain a record of the locations of all charging points either pre-stored or downloaded
 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587 579

Fig. 4. Schematic for a mobile positioning-based road charging system.

directly via the units communication link. At a pricing cordon, the system will deduct the appro-
priate charge from the credit-units stored in its account. As GPS is essentially a one-way commu-
nications technology, the in-vehicle device also requires an additional communications link for
management and enforcement purposes. Most systems tend to use GSM to inform the central sys-
tem that it is working properly, and once a limit has been reached on the on-board account, en-
abling it to initiate the clearing process and allowing a range of credit-transfer options. GSM can
also reload a smartcard and update the IVU with information on the charging tariff and locations
of the ÔvirtualÕ pricing sites as well as providing an enforcement function (Fig. 4). The enforcement
function is provided by providing information back to the central or roadside systems that the in-
vehicle unit is Ôworking properlyÕ and deducting charges—if such a message is not received then
the in-vehicle unit is deemed to not be working properly and enforcement procedures are initiated
which require that the licence plate of the vehicle is recorded (generally along with a ÔcontextÕ pho-
tograph of the traffic scene so that there is proof that a vehicle with the licence plate and corre-
sponding colour and make of vehicle is present at the point that the evidence is recorded). Several
systems, including the Swiss lorry charging system utilise DSRC as the technology for communi-
cations to provide the enforcement function. An MPS solution lends itself to distance-based and
zone-based charging as well. Such a system was planned to go live on the German autobahn net-
work in 2002, however due to highly publicised technical difficulties, the system was finally
launched in late 2004 (Charpentier and Fremont, 2003; Ruidisch, 2003; Kossak, 2004).

4.2.1. Third generation cellular radio technology

Proposals have been made for tolling systems based on charging for entering a radio ÔcellÕ, with
the first trials being held on the A555 Köln–Bonn autobahn in 1996. Until recently, this option
could be discounted, as phones could not offer sufficient accuracy in pin-pointing the location
of phone is at any given time. However, this may change with the potential locationing function
that will be inherent in the third generation (3G) licences for mobile phones. The 3G companies
claim an accurate location service for business phone users—perhaps down to 10–15 m resolu-
tion—which may be ample for road-use charging purposes (although evidence for enforcement
580 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

and prosecution may require a greater accuracy of proof of location). However experience with
current versions of 3G phones in tests in Newcastle and the extensive trials undertaken in London
in the first six months of 2004 to evaluate potential future technologies for an extension to the
London Congestion Charging scheme suggest that location accuracy is in the region of several
100 m at best (Evans, 2004)—not nearly enough to run an effective scheme and deliver credible
evidence for the prosecution of non-payers. Nevertheless, as mobile phones already have secure
access and a central payment facility (as well as European interoperability), the technology needs
only to provide a credible security and enforcement solution to be considered as a future con-
tender (Birle, 2004).

4.3. Video-based license-plate recognition

4.3.1. Video-based systems

Video-based systems rely on the accurate ÔreadingÕ of vehiclesÕ licence plates as the primary
means of identifying, charging and enforcing vehicles in a congestion charging scheme. Automatic
number plate recognition (ANPR) systems process the video images taken by a camera at the
roadside or on a gantry, locate the number plate in the image and convert this into the appropri-
ate alphabetic/numeric characters, without any human intervention (Fig. 5). The significant
advantage of such an approach is that it removes the need for any in-vehicle equipment to be in-
stalled. Moreover, it solves the Ôoccasional userÕ problem, whereby those who rarely use a partic-
ular charging scheme do not have the necessary in-vehicle equipment to pay the charges
automatically.
The increasing use of video cameras for road traffic monitoring has given an incentive to im-
prove camera technology, including optical processing, to provide a wider contrast range and give
clear images, even when the licence-plates are in heavy shadow or surrounded by bright headlights
in direct alignment with the camera. Unresolved problems with ANPR, however, still include:

• number plates of many and different shapes and sizes,

• number plates which are not retro-reflective,

Fig. 5. Video based congestion charging scheme.

 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587 581

• difficulties for accurate reading in poor weather, due to dirt/rain/snow,

• non-standardised fonts,
• similarities between some letters/numbers (Os being read as Ds, for example) and
• insufficient control of ambient light at camera positions.

To improve the overall accuracy, some vendors provide for the capture of multiple images; if
ANPR determines the same plate information for all, the confidence level of the data is improved
and manual interpretation may not be required. Any discrepancies are either placed in a queue for
visual inspection or treated as a Ôlost revenueÕ transaction. A Government Office for London Re-
port (GOL, 2000) reviewed the road-use charging options for London (the ÔROCOLÕ report) in
1998/1999. It studied the feasibility of road-use pricing and work-place parking charging, as well
as the likely impacts on business, traffic levels and usersÕ reactions to the charging proposals. It
recommended that London should implement a video-based road-use charging system, in the first
instance, until the results of the DIRECTS project were available. In August 2002, the Mayor,
Ken Livingstone gave the final go-ahead to proceed towards a full-scale implementation of con-
gestion charging in central London, using ANPR. The highly publicised launch of London was on
the 17th February 2003—and it seems to work. There are clearly some technical problems with the
scheme but the management of it seems sufficiently robust to cope. Indeed more than two years
after the launch of the scheme reduction in traffic is still around 15–18% and the difference in the
environment and travel-times within the cordon is remarkable (TfL, 2004). This has led to a re-
think by many local authorities as to their options for charging.

5. How congestion charging technology may develop

These three competing families of technology for future charging systems have different attri-
butes, advantages and disadvantages. For many years, DSRC-based systems have been preferred,
due to their simplicity of operation, potential for supporting additional services for vehicle users
and, most importantly, because they are easy for users to understand—you pass a point and you
pay. New technologies, however, have opened up new opportunities for innovative charging
schemes. Wide-area charging schemes are attractive and offer new possibilities for charging with-
out the main disadvantage of short-range charging systems, namely the associated road-side infra-
structure at every charging and enforcement point. Some infrastructure is still required for
enforcement purposes (Fig. 4), but this can be situated in locations where aesthetics are not a
prime consideration. Portable and mobile enforcement systems are also possible (Egeler and Bib-
aritsch, 2003). Effective operation and enforcement using GPS-based systems was demonstrated in
the recent Hong Kong charging trials (1998–1999). Moreover, the distance-based taxation of
heavy goods vehicles which is currently being trialled and procured by the UK Treasury and
Customs & Excise (HMCE, 2004) could probably only be efficiently implemented using some
form of wide-area charging (probably linked to vehiclesÕ digital tachographs—as in Switzerland).
Video-based charging is a very recent innovation, with London being the first large urban area to
adopt such an approach. In Norway, ANPR/video is used as the primary charging means in the
cities of Kristiansand and Bergen: however, this is on a very small scale in comparison with
London. For central London, the scheme has clearly required a very complex back-office clearing
582 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

and management system, to register, on a daily basis, all those who wish to pay to use the charged
area within the cordon and also to record and process the images of all vehicles recorded, entering
the charged area—but who have not registered and paid. If the system in London continues to be
deemed a success over the next two or three years, several other UK cities, including Edinburgh,
may introduce a similar system although the scaleability of a central London cordon into a much
larger scheme using the same technology package is as of yet questionable from both a technical
point of view and in terms of the unit cost of processing a transaction using the current solution
deployed in London. Indeed, Transport for London has recognised this and has embarked on a
series of trials to examine a range of potential technologies which could be used to support exten-
sions to the London congestion charging zone, this includes GPS and EGNOS based satellite
location schemes, 2.5G and 3G mobile phones, DSRC (both using microwave and infrared-based
solutions) and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technologies. Looking ahead, the short-
term future evolution of charging is likely to be a fusion of DSRC with either an ANPR or
wide-area charging systems—which will be able to support several different charging configura-
tions with one set of in-vehicle equipment. However recent trials of wide-area technologies
(GPS and cellular phones) in the urban environment of London have been less than conclusive
(Patchett and Firth, 2005) Whilst the city of Stockholm has decided to use a DSRC technology
to provide a charging cordon around the city by end of 2005 (subject to various on-going judicial
reviews) and to facilitate interoperability with some of the toll bridges, such as Øresund, which
already operates DSRC toll-technology.
In the longer term advances in communications and mobile networking technologies may actu-
ally cause a radical re-think of how vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communica-
tions may evolve. Attention of the research community is now focused on fourth generation
(4G) systems (Prasad and Munoz, 2003; Prasad and Ruggieri, 2003)—not a new technology,
but the integration of a number of existing technologies such as 3G, Digital Audio Broadcast
(DAB) and Wireless LAN (WLAN) into heterogeneous wireless networks to provide access to
an increasing range of services. Data will be transported through 4G networks using packets
which conform to the Internet Protocol version 6 (Ipv6) standards. Mobile devices will be able
to connect to a 4G network through the nearest WLAN hot-spot Access Point (AP). This means
that users become totally independent of the mobile network operator. Local authorities and
transport operators seem to favour this technology as a short to medium term for personal com-
munications provision over LAN distances (Edwards et al., 2003). Moves towards investigating
an intelligent pervasive infrastructure for the road transport environment are underway and coor-
dinated by the DfT jointly with the DTIs Foresights Intelligent Infrastructure initiative (DTI,
2004).
Over the past 18 months or so there has been a rapid evolution of communications and net-
working technologies, particularly for the portable market (PCs, mobile phones, PDAs and sim-
ilar devices). Of particular interest is the concept of evolving a range of small devices which can
configure themselves into an intelligent mobile adhoc network (MANET) for communications or
monitoring purposes. These devices currently exist commercially as 10p piece sized devices called
MOTES (MOTES, 2004) which can be fitted with a range of sensors to measure environmental
conditions and are networkable through a self configurable radio interface. On their own these
devices may have a role to play in transport now for environmental monitoring (pollution, noise,
temperature), provision of information (congestion), vehicle to vehicle, in-vehicle and vehicle to
 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587 583

roadside communications. The potential for such devices to be miniaturised using future nano-
technology production processes (Smartdust, 2003) raises new applications which can take advan-
tage of an almost-invisible pervasive deployment. Wireless devices are apparent in everyday life
from mobile phones to millimetre precision locating systems. Wireless technology is advancing
at speed and the opportunities for use in the intelligent transport field are immeasurable and in-
clude areas such as road user charging, congestion control and fleet management.
The opportunity to harness the potential of new, intelligent infrastructure within the road
transport sector will be a major research issue of the next decade. The ability to monitor, sense,
manage and communicate with vehicles, the roadside control systems and the driver offers new
and currently unexplored new tools to manage the road network more efficiently. One key appli-
cation of a more pervasive approach to control would be the possibility of using such a system to
implement an incremental road-user charging system across the whole of the UK road network in
a much more intelligent way than is currently envisaged by the Secretary for State for Transport
and his National Road User Charging Steering Committee which suggests that within 10 years the
UK could use a GPS-based Ôpay as you driveÕ solution to replace the fixed price vehicle excise duty
(car tax) by a variable charge relating to the usage made by the vehicle.
If one considers that with the appropriate level of intelligent infrastructure probably using some
form of MANETS (Mobile Adhoc Network) or other wireless devices (MOTES) then vehicles will
be constantly in communications with other vehicles near it as well the infrastructure (which can
then deliver location based services and intelligent control and safety applications)—this also
lends itself to a very discrete form of road pricing, whereby congestion or environmental hotspots
can be priced higher than less effected parts of the road network, whilst cities and road authorities
can charge appropriately to meet their demand management objectives. Since a National system is
currently on the UK political agenda, one can use the premise that this could be used to fund an
intelligent wired and wireless infrastructure for roads and streets (and thus connecting into other
infrastructure and buildings) in the built environment—one could argue that this revenue gener-
ating infrastructure could form the basis of a backbone for other applications and services—such
as traffic control and disaster recovery.
Research and on-road trials in Newcastle have shown that motes are a flexible new technology
that can offer dynamic solutions to meet demand. They have never before been put to use for these
applications and needs to be tested to define its role in ITS (Fig. 6). Moreover the pervasive nature
of the devices lends the technology to enable cars to always be ÔconnectedÕ to the infrastructure
and thus opening up the scope for an intelligent, configurable ITS infrastructure that will be avail-
able for a range of applications to support travel and travellers.
The implications of this research suggest that motes and their future nano-sized successors—
smartdust—may fill the gap left by microwave and cellular charging techniques and can quite
easily replace them all together. Studies are underway at Newcastle University to examine this
technology with trials of prototype devices scheduled for the Spring of 2005. The MOTES used
here offer the potential of a pervasive mobile communications environment so that vehicles are
always in communications with the roadside infrastructure. As MOTES are miniaturised towards
nano-technology sizes the cost will be reduced to the point where pervasivity becomes economi-
cally viable. Whether the communications performance of these WiFi adhoc networks could be
good enough to provide the primary form of charging is yet to be proved, however as part of
a hybrid solution (with MPS, DSRC or ANPR) there is no doubt such technology could have
584 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

Fig. 6. Pervasive vehicle/infrastructure for charging using mobile adhoc networks.

a role to play in future schemes (Blythe and Pickford, 2004). Nevertheless the new technical pos-
sibilities highlighted above may offer some new tools for implementing road user charging in a
more fine-grain and flexible way than is readily possible with more conventional automated charg-
ing options.

6. Summary

The paper has attempted to illustrate the background to the problem of traffic growth and the
consequent issues associated with traffic congestion in the UK. Moreover it has charted how the
debate on road user charging evolved over the late 1980s to late 1990s in the UK resulting in
the 2000 Transport Act which enabled local authorities to introduce congestion charging. The
UK now has four strands to its road-user charging policies which, at the moment, are not as
Ôjoined upÕ as they should be to deliver the necessary outcomes and also to make the package,
as a whole, understandable (and indeed sellable) to the public, these strands being:

• urban congestion charging which may be introduced by local authorities and whose subsequent
income is retained by the authority for reinvestment in local transport-related schemes, such as
those in Durham and London;
• the charging for the use of a DBFO road infrastructure, essentially road-tolling as recently
introduced with the opening of the M6 Birmingham North Relief Road;
• the charging for the use of the road network of HGVs by a distance based tax tempered by the
reimbursement of part of the fuel duty paid, if drivers purchase fuel in the UK and
• the long-term aim to introduce a National pay-as-you-go road user charging scheme to replace
(at least in part) vehicle excise duty and fuel duty—for the entire UK vehicle population.
 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587 585

The technologies to offer efficient and automated ways to collect the charges from the above
scheme-types, are for the first two largely proven, whilst for HGV-charging the design and pro-
curement phases are currently underway. As for a National charging scheme it is generally agreed
by the key actors in the field that the technology to achieve this at a low cost and with sufficient
accuracy (for evidential purposes) is at least a decade away. This assumption is based upon the
assumption that the National scheme will implement some combination of distance-based charg-
ing and regional, zonal or even congestion Ôhot-spotÕ charging and will require the use of GNSS
satellite location systems (probably a combination of both the GPS and the Galileo systems with
additional map-matching and inertial navigation). The challenges to achieve this are great—not
least due to the problems with accurate location finding in highly built up urban areas. Neverthe-
less, one can confidently predict that within a decade solutions will be emerging using GNSS. One
would suggest that there is still an opportunity for other contenders to emerge for future, flexible
road user charging schemes. At present the Ôyoung pretendersÕ for future road pricing could be
potentially: a 3G based solution; RFID; or the use of mobile adhoc pervasive computing—each
of which is yet to be fully proven—but one would argue at this stage not to be completely dis-
counted for future schemes.
One concern with the four strands to charging policy in the UK, is the lack of joining-up and
coordination between them. Surely a great deal of opportunities will be lost if the appropriate
agencies and local authorities cannot ensure some commonality between the systems, indeed, dare
we not raise the term interoperability. This would reduce the infrastructure and operational costs
for all the systems and potentially a single, or small number of back-end systems for the UK
would facilitate a simpler system for the public to understand. Encouragingly there are indeed
some interoperability being achieved between the DSRC systems used by the M6-toll, some of
the tolled estuarial crossings and the DSRC trials being undertaken by the DfTs DIRECTS pro-
ject. Eventually, TfL may migrate to a DRSC-based solution as well, however at the moment the
lack of cooperation between the DfT and Customs and Excise suggest that interoperability with
the HGV charging scheme will be a lost opportunity.
A final concern would be that the four strands of future road use charging policy in the UK are
likely to send out confused and mixed messages to drivers. Will they be able to distinguish be-
tween which is a local hypothecated charge (the former two) and which are national tax-raising
measures (the latter two)?
To accept one form of charging—as has been demonstrated in London—is an achievement. To
gain the buy-in of the general public and business to four different road use charges is unlikely—
particularly in the UK where the likelihood that the charges will instantly reflect in a better road
and general transport system is optimistic to say the least. Nevertheless the emergence of a poten-
tial new generation of mobile technologies to meet the future demands of widespread charging
offer another unprecedented opportunity for the UK to remain at the forefront of future conges-
tion charging ITS research as well as leading the way on implementation.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Dr. John Walker (Thales), Dr. Alan Tully (Newcastle University)
and Paul Knight (Faber Maunsel) for comments and advice on various drafts of this paper.
586 P.T. Blythe / Transportation Research Part A 39 (2005) 571–587

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